


Understood

by peaceloveandjocularity, stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M, mention of conversion therapy, touch starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25401265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaceloveandjocularity/pseuds/peaceloveandjocularity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Charles struggles to figure out what sort of relationship he is meant for and what manner of life he wishes to live.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Understood

When Pierce and Hunnicutt saw Korean orphans digging for bits of brass and copper to sell to the junk collectors who made them into trinkets and souvenirs, they thought about American imperialism and an unjust war. Charles thought about being exiled to such a place. He thought about how it would be easier to find buried treasure than the one thing he wanted: a companion. He was exhausted by loneliness. Before Korea, he’d just been mildly worn, but here… he was constantly on the outer periphery. He belonged to - and with - no one. 

And the only offers he received to change said status came with certain complications. 

Charles hadn’t been intimate with anyone (hell, with  _ himself _ ) for quite some time. Now, sex felt like an audition for which he did not know how to practice or prepare… one that would be accompanied by its share of embarrassment- maybe even failure. Loneliness was a familiar state… being marked deficient- incapable - was not. 

The answer to his problems came in a most unexpected - and cuddly - package. As his tolerance-turned-friendship with Maxwell Klinger grew, so did Klinger’s presence in his life - even in his cot. Klinger simply  _ was  _ physical, given to pats on the shoulder or quick squeezes of encouragement, but he was as careful with Charles as with a fragmentation grenade. The Major had never defined his boundaries for Klinger, but somehow, from the first, Klinger knew where they were - and respected them. 

Then, on a night when Pierce and Hunnicutt were working and the Swamp belonged to them, Klinger carefully edged his pretty, painted toes onto the ice covering the deep waters of Charles’ soul. 

“Major, you know I like spending time with you, right?” 

It made him chuckle. As of late, Klinger had taken to spending time not just  _ with  _ but as  _ near  _ as he could, as if Charles was a hearth and he was a cat slinking out of the November wind, drawn to the warmth. “I had noticed, yes.”  _ You have regrettable taste in this,  _ he thought,  _ if not in fabrics.  _ Klinger was wearing a wraparound skirt in spilled wine that tied high on one hip. It matched the bandana at his throat. 

“So, can I ask you something… about you… without you getting mad?” 

“It’s difficult to speak to what I will feel, not knowing what you wish to discuss. But I will try to answer you without anger. Will that serve?” 

Klinger figured it would have to do. That ice was starting to feel brittle though. “Major, a lot of people don’t know what to make of me. The dresses, you know? Or the days when I wear a fancy top and fatigues.” The fact that Charles had never questioned his need to embody both male and female traits - and express this embodiment via fashion - was a source of great comfort. “Major, do you… do you ever feel like maybe people don’t understand you all that well either?” 

Charles turned on his side to look at the slender creature sitting beside his bunk, sewing patterns into a square of suede. “Why… why do you ask that, Max?” 

Klinger didn’t look up from the pattern he was making as he laid out his reasons. “Lots of nurses have tried to date you. And I’ve noticed how you kinda… dodge when people touch you.” He sensed Charles’ frown. “I’m not criticizing. Just wondering. What’s your story, Major?”  _ And is it the kind of story that might have some space in it for me?  _

Charles stared at him a moment and the helplessness in his eyes almost made Klinger sob for him. He would have wrapped his arms around the man’s neck, but he could see that his muscles there were corded with nervousness.  _ Slow and easy _ , he told himself.  _ Like catching a terrified kitten in an alley _ .  _ Let him know that even though the world might’ve kicked him around, you won’t hurt him.  _ “I get not fitting under an easy label. I’m just asking because I want to know you.”  _ All of you.  _

“No one ever… no one understands,” he said at last. He’d been seen, by others he’d chosen to confide in, as a challenge, a project, an invalid, or a freak. 

Klinger just smiled at him, ready to accept anything. “I once threatened to kill Major Burns with a grenade  _ over a bandanna _ , sir.” He tugged at the decoration worn around his pretty throat. “You can tell me.” His dark eyes went on to add:  _ there’s nothing you could say, contain, embody, or aspire to that would scare me. I like you - all the way through.  _

“It was your lucky bandanna, wasn’t it? That’s how the story was told to me, anyway.” 

“Uh-huh. But it wasn’t about luck. It was about being me. About not having all of  _ me  _ taken away and papered over with khaki. I want to be myself and the clothes are part of that.” He held his gaze. “And it’s not the same self everyday, you know?” 

Charles actually did. Some days Klinger felt feminine and demure and wore delicate shades. Other days he felt street tough and male. Some days were a mixture of both… or something else entirely. He liked  _ all  _ the Klingers, from Scarlett O’Hara to androgyne. 

“I understand for you… but I’m,” he struggled for the word. To call himself “stranger” implied that Klinger was “strange,” and he didn’t think there was anything wrong with his friend, only with himself. “Broken,” he said at last. “I’ve never told another person this, Max, but I think I’m made incorrectly. Twisted. Stunted. I see everyone carrying on with that part of their lives - in the supply tent, in the motor pool… and I don’t feel  _ anything _ . I think I could go quite without intercourse for the rest of my life.” His hands moved helplessly. “I’m like a desert, Max. Nothing can grow here but me.” 

_ But _ , the unwanted thought followed,  _ I’m so lonely out here by myself. I didn’t  _ **_ask_ ** _ to be a desert.  _

Klinger smiled at him, his face gentle, proud. “Thanks for telling me. And you’re not broken, Major. Not a bit.” 

“How do you know?” 

“From being in OR and X-ray. People can have extra ribs, right? I’ve seen ‘em. Or some people are missing a vertebrae. They’re not  _ broken _ . They’re just them. We’re custom jobs, sir.” 

Charles was not yet convinced. “Even in Boston, men talked about sex. Men who don’t… men like me… I know the science behind it. Psychiatry says it’s a deficiency. A terrible flaw.” 

Klinger very much wanted to shore him up through touch, but knew now it might only cause him to feel worse. “You’re too smart for that. Sure, maybe most people like sex, but you’re allowed to be in the minority. You should be used to it, even,” he teased. “How many people are as smart as you?” 

Charles sighed. “The graduating class of Harvard is not small, Max, and they graduate a cohort each year. It’s expensive, but not as prestigious as all that.” 

_ You really are torn up about this.  _ “Now you’re treating me like  _ I’m  _ stupid. Going there isn’t the same as smart. You were smart before the diploma.”

Charles looked chastened. He was mistreating the only person who genuinely wanted to spend time with him. “I’m sorry. I just… I’ve never spoken like this before. It’s, ah, it’s exhausting, frankly.” 

“So, let me help. How can I help make you feel not broken?” 

“If I knew what to do, I would have done it by now.” He realized he’d snapped at Klinger and clamped his eyes shut. “I am sorry. I am unaccustomed to not knowing what course to take. I, ah, I don’t like it.” 

Klinger bit off the end of the thread and folded up his work. “You’re a doctor, right? And that’s like science. And science has experiments. So, let’s do one. Then you’ll have… whadaya call it? Data?” He looked genuinely excited, Charles thought, eager to help out. 

“What are you suggesting? I don’t… as I said, I don’t want sex.” 

“There’s a whole lot more to what two people can do together than just sex. Look, I promise if you hate it, we’ll stop.”

Uncertain, Charles nodded. 

_ You called yourself a desert, Major,  _ Klinger thought,  _ and it’s the desert my people are from. Let me walk around out there awhile.  _

“Okay. When’s the last time somebody touched you?” 

“Honoria hugged me when I left Boston.”

“Massachusetts?” 

Charles glared, then realized the gag. “Don’t make me buy you a map, Klinger.” 

“Just trying to make you laugh. Here, let’s start with the basics. Give me your hand.” 

Charles trembled. Klinger glanced at him surreptitiously just to make sure he wasn’t making it up, but it was real. “Is it supposed to feel this overwhelming?” Charles practically whispered. 

_ Oh, God, you’re so touch starved.  _ Swallowing back the pain he felt for the other man, he prepared to let go. “Want me to stop? You’re in charge, Major.” 

“No. I’ll be okay, I think. You have small hands.” He stared down at their joined hands and Klinger felt his heart convulse with pity. 

“You’re allowed to breathe, you know.” 

“Was I not?” 

“Your lips are kinda blue. Your chest isn’t rising, either.”

“My chest?” 

Klinger couldn’t resist. He rested his hand there a moment. “You know - here.” 

“I’m a thoracic surgeon. I know where it is!” 

Hearing the brittleness increase, Klinger sought to untangle his hand. “Here, I’ll let go.”

“No!” 

“Hon, that wasn’t a threat. I just don’t want to upset you.” 

“W-what?” 

It was Klinger’s turn to look abashed. “Sorry. Slipped out. No pet names, promise. And I won’t let go if you don’t want me to, but you look kinda terrified.” 

“I think that may be the case for some time. You still look terrified in OR.” 

“That’s a bit different than affection.” The comparison was, in fact, painful. Klinger could imagine few things worse than the horrors of the operating theater, especially one in which meatball surgery was being done at a terrible clip. 

“Not so different. It isn’t your element. This is not mine.” He looked pained, then oddly delighted when Klinger squeezed his fingers. Being reassured through touch was very new. 

“Major, can I ask you one more thing without you getting mad?” 

“I believe you’ve more than won the right.” 

“Someone hurt you, didn’t they?” 

_ Many someones. And they were paid well to do so.  _ He looked at their braided fingers; perhaps he could do this, could set old ghosts free. “You said I was too intelligent to place my belief in psychiatry. Rather, I am too  _ experienced _ .” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Nothing you need to imagine. Suffice it to say that not all doctors heal, Max.” 

“Can I?”

It wasn’t that absurd a question;  _ well  _ was part of the man’s name. “You are a generous thing. It’s nothing you can undo.” Those men had done their work too well. 

“I can sure try.” He’d started out imagining himself on ice, but now he had accepted Charles’ metaphor and he felt those desert winds rise up around him - scorching. The trick was not to allow Charles to vanish back into them alone again. 

“You are helping,” Charles reassured him. But the truth was that even thinking of those dark times, the way the treatment had emptied him out of everything- desire, self, soul - made him faint. 

“This is easy stuff. Want to lay down?” 

Charles looked startled. 

“You look dizzy is all. I’ll still hold your hand.” 

“Do people do that?” he heard himself ask, stupidly. 

“Have you  _ been  _ to post op? Sometimes that’s about all anyone can do. C’mon, I’ll tuck you in.” 

Charles laid down. “You don’t have to. I’m not cold.” 

Klinger’s eyes laughed at him. “Blankets aren’t just for when you’re cold. They’re good for lonely and upset, too.” He nimbly worked the blankets in around him. 

Charles barely registered this; what a different world Klinger inhabited - a world where fingers might so easily twine, a world where gentle hands pulled up the covers and smoothed them. 

He did register when Klinger touched his face; he flinched. 

“I’m going to find your parents and beat them,” Klinger said, angry and low. “In my skirts to shame them.” They’d had no right to have so beautiful and talented a son only to destroy him. 

“I think I might let you. What are you doing?” 

“Caring. Basic affection. You had that at least, didn’t you?” 

“It seems not. Perhaps with Honoria… but I was away much of the time. Boarding school. Even for holidays.” 

“Why were you gone so often?” He hadn’t missed a family holiday until basic training. 

“They wanted it that way, I suppose.” Had that been when the loneliness had awakened in him? Begun seeping in? 

“You sound really tired. Go to sleep, Major.” 

He didn’t want to, but he really  _ was  _ tired; he’d even allowed Klinger to criticize his family. His eyes closed, but he continued to hold Klinger’s hand. 

***

They continued to collect data that way for weeks. Whenever Charles felt loneliness constrict his lungs, he went to Klinger, who held his hand or stroked his hair, curling a lock around one finger; eventually he even held  _ him _ . Klinger only touched him if and in ways he allowed, and he never presumed that what he had done before was now a given. He always asked and he never seemed to be wearied by the unusual nature of it all. 

One night, when Klinger was resting beside him, sprawled part way across his chest, closer than Charles had ever imagined he’d ever allow anyone to get, the surgeon asked, quietly, “Klinger, are we dating?” 

Klinger was practically asleep. “Do you wanna be?” 

“I don’t want you to date anyone else.” It was a new and growing fear that had awoken in him. 

Klinger yawned, nuzzled against him without even knowing he was doing it. “I won’t, Major.”

Charles smiled in spite of himself; Klinger had worn all the “command” and martial connotations off of his title until, when he said it, it became an endearment. He very tentatively touched the younger man’s hair. “Thank you, Max.” 

*** 

Dating proved to be a pleasant state for Winchester. It certainly made him feel better about the favors he asked Klinger for - and he was no longer so perilously lonely that he sometimes felt like he was drowning while everyone around him watched. 

But just a few short weeks in, he joined Klinger for the camp’s weekly movie. The Corporal wore his red and blue cloak as a shield against the evening’s coolness. It was pulled over one shoulder as a sort of blanket. He smiled when Charles joined him. “Hi beautiful,” he mouthed. Then, “You can hold my hand under here if you want to,” he told him, voice pitched low so that only he could hear it. “No one will see.” 

_ If you want to _ . 

Those words hit his ear as violin music - the saddest instrument, Winchester had always believed - rose on the screen and pain rose in him in answer, unexpectedly. What kind of boyfriend had to have qualifiers attached to even the tiniest expressions of affection? Never mind the dangers attached to the fact that they were both men and in the Army. Those facts weren’t what had made Klinger say what he’d said. 

Winchester looked around. There were a few people actually watching the film - Mulcahy, Rizzo - but most of the audience was composed of couples with locked lips and twining arms. He breathed faster.  _ I can’t date you, Max. I can’t give you that. I can’t give you anything.  _ He murmured something to his … well, what was he now? The man he was losing because he couldn’t counterfeit normal even to hold onto him? Then he left, ignoring the grumbling as his tall shadow momentarily eclipsed the screen. 

He made it to the Swamp before Klinger caught up and he knew he’d waited to spare his reputation, to keep anyone from thinking the wrong thing. Tonight, his care and consideration was maddening. 

“I think you should go,” Charles told him, without meeting his eyes. 

“I will if you want me to, but are you okay? What happened in there?” 

“Maxwell, I believe that we should end all of this.”

“You’re…” Charles watched, impressed, as he drew a breath and steadied himself. “Even being friends? Major, you know I won’t ask you for more than you can give…”

Charles couldn’t listen to any more. “I have collected all the data I feel is necessary.” 

“Don’t ask me to give you up.”  _ You’re the only thing here that makes me feel safe _ . 

“There’s nothing to give up. I was never yours.” 

“Oh. O-okay, then.” His eyes were beseeching, begging because he didn’t allow his mouth to beg, Charles knew, because he didn’t want to cause  _ Charles  _ further pain. “Take… take care of yourself, Major.” 

Then he turned and shuffled away, head down. 

***

If he had not just been broken up with - though, he supposed, Charles would not accept such a definition in light of his new “I was never yours” policy - Klinger would have noticed something was wrong as he walked past the supply tent. But he was eye to eye with the black marketeers when he realized - and then there was just an explosion of pain and the sound of a jeep roaring away, the jam-sticky warmth of pooling blood - and dark. 

***

Charles was asleep when Pierce was summoned to the OR. When BJ filled him in, the mustachioed surgeon thought that Hawk was going to have another injury on his hands. Charles paled, swayed, then left. Walking without seeing, he found Pierce. Charles virtually never had anything nice to say about Crabapple Cove’s answer to medicine - but somehow Pierce read his eyes - even the back issues. 

“I don’t know how long he was lying there,” he said. He didn’t tell him about the blood. 

Charles trembled.  _ If I had just let him stay…  _

“Other injuries?” 

“Mostly bruising,” Hawk reported. “Sprained wrist, so no sewing for awhile. He’ll be sore. I’m keeping him under to let the head wound heal.” 

It was sound medical practice, every bit of it. Despite this, Charles wanted to climb into the narrow, uncomfortable hospital bed with him and hold him. Warm him. 

“Holy Toledo,” he whispered. 

His wild eyes unnerved Pierce. “Charles?” 

“Can you get me a chair, Pierce? I-I want to sit with him if I could.”

“Sure. What are you going to do?” 

Charles’ entire face seemed to wobble for a moment before a helpless smile broke through. “I, ah, I wish to hold his hand.” 

Pierce clapped him on the shoulder and went to retrieve the chair. “Good.” 

***

When Klinger woke up, his head  _ really  _ hurt. And something rested on his chest, too heavy to move. He pushed and prodded at it, annoyed, only to hear Winchester say, “Darling, that is my  _ eye _ that you are so determinedly trying to extinguish.” 

Klinger gasped. “Major? What the hell, sir?” 

“If you are swearing at me may I assume your brains are  _ not _ scrambled?” He sat up and began examining him, tilting his head and feeling the edges of the stitches. Pierce did good work.

Klinger fought his head free. “My brains are just fine, not that you’d care.” He massaged the back of his next. “Stupid black market. I tried to tell ‘em I’m from Toledo - what do I care about a few stolen crates? But they wouldn’t listen.” 

Winchester stood and removed his hands, replaced them with his own. “Allow me.” 

Klinger tried to crane around but Charles held him firmly in place. “Don’t strain your neck.”

“What are  _ you  _ straining? What happened to kicking me to the curb? What happened to you not being able to touch me?” 

Charles was grateful Pierce had allowed him to put Klinger back in his tent; this wasn’t an argument he wanted to have in post op - even if he no doubt deserved the stares that would have resulted. To calm the incensed creature under his hands, he dug into the pressure points behind his ears until Klinger stilled a bit. Once that was accomplished, he asked the injured man’s leave to explain. 

“Okay,” Klinger agreed, “but come out here so I can look at you at least.” He was more than half afraid that Charles was forcing himself to touch him as some kind of penance and he really didn’t want that. 

Charles reluctantly came to stand in front of him. “Maxwell, I … I did what I did,”

“You dumped my pretty ass,” Klinger said helpfully. 

“... that… because I grew frightened. I thought that I would lose you because I could give you so very little.” 

“I didn’t ask you for anything else!” Klinger protested. 

“I know that you did not.” He sat down on the bed. “But you deserve more. An actual relationship. I feared that I could never give it to you.”

“So you decided it’d be better for me just to be alone and miserable? Not your smartest plan, Major.” 

Charles flushed, miserable. “I thought you were going to tire of how little I could give you.”

“So you left me  _ first _ ?” He groaned. “ _ Major _ !! You’re  _ terrible _ at this!” 

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “Do you suppose you could give me another chance?”

“Just one,” Klinger agreed. “Screw up again and you’re not getting out of it this easy.”

Hearing himself forgiven, Charles sighed with relief. “Thank you, Max.” 

“Now tell me what’s up with all the touching. If you’re making yourself touch me to try to keep me, I’m gonna call you stupid again.” 

“I deserve no less. But I assure you that I am forcing nothing. When I saw you in that bed, hurting, I discovered that I was wrong about a great many things. I wanted to hold you. Maxwell, I’ve never wanted to hold anyone. And I think… I think I want to do more than that.” He was flushed again. “When you are quite well.” 

“Holy Toledo!”

Charles kissed his nose, laughing. “I concur, beautiful. I quite concur.” 

End! 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
